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Pygmy Elephant
Pygmy Elephant is a small elephant, reported from dense, swampy rain forests of Central Africa (From Sierra Leone to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, especially Ndjolé and Fernan Vaz in Gabon; the Yobe River in the Central African Republic; southern Cameroon; Equatorial Guinea; Lake Mai- Ndombe, Democratic Republic of the Congo; the Uele River near Gangala-na-Bodio, Democratic Republic of the Congo.). Shoulder height, 3 feet 8 inches–6 feet 8 inches. Weight, up to 3,100 pounds. Reddish-brown to brownish-gray or black skin. Flat face. Large, roundish ears. Trunk with two fingerlike appendages on the tip. Relatively long tusks (2 feet 2 inches long on a specimen 5 feet 5 inches tall at the shoulder). Highest point of back is immediately behind the head. Round, thin tail with a tuft of hairs at the end. A more exclusively aquatic variety in the Congo could be a completely different animal, possibly related to the Water Lion. Aquatic variety: Ears are relatively smaller than the African elephant’s. Head is long and ovoid. Short, 2- foot trunk. No tusks. Longish neck. Curved back. Shiny skin. Short legs. Behavior Truculent, aggressive temperament. Raises its trunk frequently to catch scents. Travels in troops (ten to twenty) or herds (fifty to seventy) of adults and young. Aquatic variety: Nocturnal. Swims with trunk and top of the head out of the water. Grazes on rank grass at night. Said to capsize boats by rising up unexpectedly out of the water. Destroys fishnets and traps. Tracks The aquatic variety shows four distinctly separated toes, with the sole impression less pronounced than that of other elephants. Length, 10–11 inches. Sightings In 1904, an enigmatic, unfossilized ivory tusk that matches no known species of elephant was acquired in the marketplace at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by Baron Maurice de Rothschild. It is about 2 feet long along the curve, flat along most of its length, and rounded at the tip, and it has five natural grooves on the bottom. A young Pygmy elephant, captured in the Republic of the Congo by Carl Hagenback in 1905, was examined in Hannover, Germany, by Theodore Noack, who designated it a subspecies of the African elephant. The animal, nicknamed “Congo,” grew to a shoulder height of 6 feet at the Bronx Zoo before it died of a leg disease in 1915. In June 1907, a traveler named Le Petit observed the aquatic variety, called locally Ndgoko na maiji, in the Congo River near its junction with the Kwa. At a later date, he observed five specimens on land near Lake Mai-Ndombe, Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 1911, a Belgian officer, Lieutenant Franssen, killed a specimen that was 5 feet 5 inches tall, with tusks more than 2 feet long, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 1913, a settler living near Léfini, Republic of the Congo, showed Hans Schomburgk a thick piece of skin, densely covered with red hair, that was said to come from a “river elephant.” In January 1955, François Edmond-Blanc went on an expedition to southern Cameroon to collect a Pygmy elephant for the University of Copenhagen. After three hours of tracking on marshy ground, he came across a group of twelve elephants that did not exceed a shoulder height of 6 feet. A Captain Chicharro killed an adult elephant 6 feet 6 inches tall near the Rio Benito, Equatorial Guinea, in September 1957. It was one of a herd of twenty-one individuals. German animal collector Ulrich Roeder examined a dead male specimen in southern Cameroon in the 1970s. Its age was approximately sixteen to eighteen years, and its tusks measured 2 feet 5 inches. H. J. Steinfurth filmed three Pygmy elephants in a clearing near the Yobe River, Central African Republic. Each one had the long tusks of an adult and stood between 5 feet 3 inches and 5 feet 6 inches at the shoulder. Photographs showing a band of Pygmy elephants were taken in May 1982 in the Likouala drainage area of the Republic of the Congo by former West German ambassador Harald N. Nestroy. The group included four adults and two juveniles. The shoulder height of the fully tusked adults was estimated at 5 feet, based on the presence of a Great egret (Egretta alba) in the photo. Shortly afterward, Nestroy saw forest elephants and forest buffalo in the same clearing, all much larger than the pygmies. A dead female Pygmy elephant, 5 feet 3 inches at the shoulder, was found at the Pygmy village of Makokou, Gabon, by L. P. Knoepfler in the 1980s. It contained a full-term fetus, demonstrating that the animal was an adult. Scientific names * Elephas africana pumilio, given by Theodore Noack in 1906; Elephas fransseni, given by Henri Schouteden in 1914. These designations have changed to Loxodonta a. pumilio and L. fransseni with the taxonomic switch of African elephants from Elephas to Loxodonta a few years later. Possible explanations * The African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis). Much confusion exists in the mainstream literature between the forest elephant and the Pygmy elephant. If mentioned at all, the latter is dismissed as a misidentified cyclotis, with the caveat that it is smaller than the African bush elephant (L. africana). However, the shoulder height for forest males is given as 7 feet 9 inches– 9 feet 9 inches, compared with the bush male’s 9 feet 9 inches–13 feet; female heights are cited as 6 feet 9 inches–8 feet 6 inches (for forest elephants), compared with 7 feet 9 inches–9 feet 9 inches (for bush elephants). Pygmies are distinctly smaller. Forest elephants do have more rounded ears than africana and straighter, thinner tusks. * Juvenile African forest elephants, suggested by Glover Allen, although these animals remain integrated with adult herds and do not form troops of their own. * A distinct species of small African elephant that prefers a moist, swampy habitat; perhaps it evolved, like other African elephants, from the ancestral L. adaurora some 3 million years ago. * A surviving deinothere, a family of proboscideans that lived in Europe, Africa, and India during the Pliocene, 3–2 million years ago, suggested by Bernard Heuvelmans. Deinotherium giganteum stood up to 13 feet tall at the shoulder and had a short trunk and two small, backward-curving tusks in the lower jaw. Smaller species such as D. bavaricum, the size of a small Asian elephant, persisted into the Pleistocene. * An evolved, pig-sized mastodont such as Phiomia, with short upper and lower shovelshaped tusks and a long neck. Known from Egypt and India in the Oligocene, 26 million years ago. * An evolved version of the tapir-like, semiaquatic Moeritherium (a proboscideanknown from the Late Eocene of North Africa, 36–34 million years ago), an alternate suggestion by Karl Shuker that presupposes the development of a trunk and long tusks. * Some reports of the aquatic, sabretoothed water lion may be mixed up with those of an aquatic, tusked elephant. Category:Article stubs Category:Cryptozoology Category:Cryptids Category:African Cryptids Category:Elephants Category:Mammals Category:Herbivore